Diagnosis before prescription.
Every engagement starts here. One to two weeks, run mostly on-site where possible, ending in a written roadmap that ranks every opportunity by payback — and tells you plainly which ones aren't worth doing. You keep it whether or not we build a thing.
Five phases. One to two weeks. One roadmap.
Assessments fail for predictable reasons: nobody talked to the people doing the work, nothing got quantified, and the recommendations arrived as a wish list. Each phase below closes one of those doors.
Discovery interviews
We talk to two groups, because they see different businesses. Leadership tells us what the company is trying to become and what they believe the problems are. The people doing the work tell us what actually happens on a Tuesday. The gap between those two answers is usually where the money is.
- Short, focused conversations with leadership and with the people doing the work
- We listen for the work that happens outside the systems you pay for
- And for the workaround someone built years ago that everyone now depends on
Your part: make people available and let them speak freely. No preparation, no homework.
Operations mapping
Everything from the interviews gets drawn as a map of how your business actually runs, broken into three engines: how customers arrive, how the work gets delivered, and how they're supported afterward. Then we mark the friction.
- Time sinks — manual, repetitive, consuming real hours every week
- Quality risks — steps that break the moment someone is busy
- Revenue leaks — where opportunities quietly exit the business
Most owners have never seen their operation on a single page. The map alone tends to change the conversation.
The opportunity matrix
Every flagged problem gets a candidate solution, and every solution gets plotted on two axes: how much business impact it creates, and how much effort it takes. That single view decides the order of everything that follows.
Validation workshop
The matrix is a hypothesis until you've challenged it. We sit down with you and go through it together, because you know things about your culture, your team, and your customers that no interview surfaces. This is a working session, not a presentation.
- What complications would we not have seen from the outside?
- Which of these would your team welcome, and which would they quietly resist?
- Does this match where you want the company in twelve months?
A roadmap you co-authored is a plan. A roadmap handed to you is a pitch. By the end of this session there is nothing left to sell.
Findings report & the numbers
Everything lands in a written report and a presentation to your leadership. It tells one story: here's what we found, here's what's worth doing, here's the order, and here's what it's worth in money.
- A phased roadmap with the quick wins first and the larger builds sequenced behind them
- Current state against future state for the top recommendations, with the time difference quantified
- The financial case, built from your real hours and real loaded cost — savings and recovered selling time
Build it with us, build it in-house, or put it in a drawer. No obligation attached and no expiry on it.
A roadmap, not a proposal.
Six deliverables, all of them yours, none of them contingent on hiring us for the build.
The operations map
Your business on one page — acquisition, delivery and support — with every time sink, quality risk and revenue leak marked.
The prioritized roadmap
What to build, in what order, and why that order. Quick wins first so the early work funds the larger builds behind it.
The financial case
Cost savings and recovered revenue, calculated from your real numbers rather than industry averages or someone else's case study.
An honest no-list
What we recommend you don't automate, and why. Usually the most valuable page in the document.
AI projects fail for predictable reasons.
Four of them, mostly — and every one is avoidable before a single system gets built.
Nobody asks the staff, so the plan gets written against the process as designed rather than the process as it exists. Nothing gets quantified, so there's no way to tell a good investment from an expensive one. The wrong thing gets built first, so the early work never funds what follows. And the team was never consulted, so they quietly route around whatever arrives.
Each phase of this assessment exists to close one of those doors. That is the entire reason it takes a week or two instead of an afternoon.
The assessment, asked and answered.
What does the assessment cost?
It depends on the size and complexity of the business — the number of people we need to interview and how many systems are involved. We scope it on the strategy call rather than publishing a number that would be wrong for most companies. What we will commit to: you own the roadmap regardless of what you do next.
Our processes are undocumented and messy. Is that a problem?
That's the normal starting point and it's precisely what the assessment is for. We interview your team, map the real workflow, and document it as part of the engagement. You don't need to prepare anything.
How much of our time does this take?
Roughly four to six hours in total. A handful of 30–45 minute interviews, plus one working session for validation and a final presentation. We carry everything else.
Do we have to build anything with you afterward?
No. The roadmap is a deliverable in its own right — take it in-house, take it to another firm, or shelve it. Most clients build with us because they were part of writing the plan, not because they were obligated to.
Does this have to happen on-site?
Not entirely, but we strongly prefer the interviews and the operations walkthrough in person. Standing behind the front desk during a busy hour reveals things no video call will. It's a large part of why we concentrate on Greater Boston.
What if you find that AI isn't the answer?
Then the report says so. A meaningful share of what looks like an AI problem is a process, staffing, or visibility problem, and automating a broken process just makes it break faster. The no-list is part of the deliverable for exactly that reason.
Start with a call.
Thirty minutes. Tell us how the business runs and where it's straining — we'll tell you honestly whether an assessment would be worth your money, and what it would likely find. If we're not a fit, we'll say so.
Our AI Assistant will call you within 60 seconds.
Leave your details and our AI Assistant takes it from there — a quick call, a couple of questions, and your AI Strategy Call on the calendar.